The Home Stretch
by ProDLnEC aka NLcsimiamifanatic
Summary: The two weeks to their baby's due date were going by so slowly...the two have the perfect way to pass the time!


_**The Home Stretch**_

_An interlude about the weeks before the arrival of Jesse McKenna Taylor._

_**Rated "M" to be safe! Impending parenthood isn't affecting the Taylors' sex life**_

Possibly any day now the Taylors were going to be parents. Or Hope Taylor could finally go into labor at least.

Or she could be pregnant for two more weeks. She was 36 weeks along, not yet considered full time. The mother-to-be had been experiencing mild discomfort and a few faint, irregular contractions on occasion but nothing "real" yet for the past day. But it was "real" enough for Mac to come home after his wife told how she was feeling. She wasn't surprised to see him walk through the door a half hour later.

"I didn't mean that you had to come home," she said to him from the couch, her eyes still closed.

Not that she wasn't glad to see him. Call her childish but she was always happy to see Mac, especially when she didn't feel good. And as much as she was _trying_ not to panic or focus on the pain, it was hard to do alone.

"How ya doin'?" He asked softly, not answering her comment. He went and kissed her cheek.

"This really sucks," she said. "My lower back aches. But only one or two mild contractions since you left this morning. They were over thirty minutes apart," Hope said, anticipating Mac's next inquiry. Just at that moment however, Hope experienced another contraction.

"Don't," Mac said firmly, squeezing his wife's hand and placing his other palm on her abdomen. Hope was tensing and holding her breath. "You're fighting it. Don't fight it, just go with it, ride it out."

That was difficult for Hope to do. Whether she did the breathing exercise or not, and she still thought the techniques were dumb even when Mac did the exercise along with her. But that guidance did help her. The contraction had lasted less than thirty seconds.

"How bad was that one?" He asked afterwards. His wife rated the pain a four out of ten.

"Do you want some water?"

His wife nodded.

"You know this could go on for a while," she said when he bought the glass. "Apparently this is only 'practice.'"

"Oh, I know," Mac replied.

The father-to-be had done a lot of talking with Hawkes and Sid. Over forty or not he was a first time dad-to-be. And as much he hated to admit it, a nervous one. Mac was reading all the related books and asking any question that crossed his mind. Besides his wife's physician, and Hawkes and Sid, Lindsay and Stella were all too glad to tell him everything they each knew, having been there and their husbands were happy to tell Mac about anything Mac could do to support his wife or sometimes just cheer her up.

* * *

"I'm bettin' by now, Hope just wants this over," Danny Messer said to his wife. The two were relaxing at home watching their young daughter play with her stuffed animals.

"Yeah. She told me the other day she's so over being pregnant but the thought of labor scares the bejesus out of her," his wife replied.

Lindsay knew the fear of labor was stronger for Hope Taylor because she were _terrified_ of hospitals.

However that fear wasn't enough to make her want ro give birth in another setting-like at home where a lot of women, insane ones, in Hope's opinion, opted to nowadays. _Before_ she thought of the possibility of complications, Hope at least wanted _access_ to drugs, even if she didn't use it. Hope's threshold for pain was wasn't very high so she believed more than likely she would getting an Epidural. But she was going to try to avoid one. _That_ procedure scared her, too but she figured if the pain got to that extreme then the insertion of the Epidural would be child's play.

The following day after a good night sleep Hope waited for a while in the morning, when she didn't experience any contractions, so she felt comfortable enough Mac took two hour lunch and the two went for lunch at the diner where they had first laid eyes on each other. The fresh air and bit of exercise would be good for Hope, Mac thought. And the walk to the diner was only five minutes or so. Some of the staff, mostly women, had wondered in the past few days whether Hope had had the baby yet since she and Mac hadn't been seen in three weeks.

"Still no baby, huh?" The waitress Amy said when she took their orders. "You guys must be getting anxious, now."

The couple said they were. They didn't divulge that they were having a little boy. The odd looks he got from on-lookers when he was out walking hand-in-hand with his very pregnant wife on the streets of Manhattan didn't annoy him. He was happy to be at this phase in his life-finally. Pregnant women in general had been beautiful to Mac for all his adult life, _his_ pregnant woman was beyond beautiful to him. Hope was, well, to be summed up in one word, hot to him. The two still made love often. Pregnancy had increased his wife's libido and Mac was all too glad to fulfill her desires. No matter how tired or stressed he was from his shift, the sight of the new rounder shape of her pregnant body made blood flow to all the right places at a very swift pace. This meant that the couple had sex almost every night. When the two returned to their apartment and began to enjoy just relaxing on their bed and possibly a "quickie", Mac's phone rang, taking the extra hour off of his intended extended lunch break.

Mac sighed, looking at the text. He had to head to the Bronx for a crime scene.

"I have to go," he said. He kissed his wife passionately. "I love you." he then leaned down and kissed her very round belly. "And I love you," he whispered to the baby in her abdomen.

"We love you, too. Be careful." his wife told him.

"I will."

He was _definitely _going to get this hour back since it was _supposed_ be used for quality time and lunchtime sex with his wife. The two were beginning to get to that when his cellphone rang.

From the expression on Mac's face when he arrived at the scene, Flack and Lindsay could tell what the call had interrupted.

"Oh boy," Don said with a smile.

Lindsay turned and their boss. She held back laughter. She knew there was few reasons one took an extended lunch, and for their boss and friend that list was even shorter. Food wasn't the main thing Mac Taylor had gone home for.

Before leaving the lab that evening, Mac asked Lindsay how the planning for Hope's baby shower was going. The big surprise was that Pam, Hope's best friend from childhood was coming in for the event. Lindsay had been talking the other woman the previous afternoon. Pam and Alicia, Mac's mother-in-law, whose visit wasn't a surprise, were coming on the same flight. Pam was staying at the Wellington Hotel. Alicia would be staying with her daughter and son-in-law during her short visit. The shower was in five days at the Messer home. The two would be arriving on Friday, a day before the shower.

* * *

Hope enjoyed her baby shower. Seeing her best friend, even for a short time, had been by far one of the best gifts. She enjoyed getting to spend time with her mother as well. Alicia joked to the couple that now would be a good time for her to go into labor. She could pace the waiting room and get to meet the baby once he was in the nursery-she still didn't have any intentions of intruding into the delivery room if she was in the city.

Unless of course by some chance her daughter _asked_ for her.

She didn't think that would happen. With a laugh, Alicia suggested the couple should go have sex "since that was known to kick-start things." The couple chuckled to themselves, thinking that if that was the case all the time then the baby have been born weeks ago. Alicia wasn't offended when her daughter went to her bedroom to lay with her husband. She knew Hope was tired and herself remembered what it was like to be at that stage of pregnancy. It was highly uncomfortable. The mother-to-be said she would look through the baby gifts she had received at the party when she got up the next day.

Mac were already laying in bed when his wife came in.

"Tired?" He asked her as laid down next to him. He instinctively began to massage her lower back.

"Uh-huh," she answered. "I had a great time at my shower. The girls really put a lot of thought into it," she said referring to Stella and Lindsay. "We have a good amount of things to look through tomorrow." Along with heaps of baby clothes and accessories, the couple has received almost $350 in cash and gift cards for children's stores. They had received a few "mommy and daddy" presents of gift cards to go for dinner. Making Hope, and a lot of the other women cry, Mac had had a dozen red roses delivered to the shower for his wife. On the note with it was written _To the woman who makes the sun shine for me every day and the moon and stars shine at night. Love, _

"For sure. The guys insisted that they throw me a 'pamper party' this week. Apparently I got either twenty bucks or a pack of pampers from everyone." Mac said. "We'll get enough diapers for a week, maybe.

Hope smiled, feeling a kick and the form of a tiny foot rise in her belly.

"He didn't move during the whole shower. And _now_ he wanted to treat mommy like a trampoline."

Hope thought that the last two weeks in her pregnancy would fly by. But the days were dragging on. So far the doctor had said there was no cause tor concern. She didn't think Hope would need to be induced, unless going into the next week, her thirty-seventh week there wasn't any signs of the baby coming on his own. Hope wasn't going to worry about induction unless she were told it was going to happen for sure. Part of her was going to miss carrying her son, having him so close to her, tucked away safely. The thought of meeting him in the flesh, seeing him who he looked like was stronger however.

She wasn't looking forward to it in the least, but she knew somehow she could handle labor—not like she had a choice not, to get to that point. Meanwhile the days and hours dragged on..

_**Other stories are in the works, but COMING SOON: **With our parents-to-be in the delivery room in the hours leading up to Jesse's birth! __**Chapter could be short to mid-length!**_


End file.
